Seth Kantner

Dec 6, 2024 | eptrail.com | Jennifer Ackerman |Seth Kantner |Ken Kaufmann

Nature lovers are hearty souls who like to be outdoors any time of year. Winter days don’t hinder them from looking for birds, photographing landscapes, watching the local wildlife, taking a hike or any other numerous ways to enjoy the outdoors. But there are still those days when even the most adventurous of outdoor enthusiasts want to curl up under a warm down blanket with a cup of hot chocolate overflowing with whip cream to read a good book.

Oct 28, 2024 | adn.com | Seth Kantner

KOTZEBUE — Here in the Arctic, we’re cleaning up after a storm suddenly flooded town. It’s supposed to be winter, with ice and travel by snowmobile, and instead ocean waters battered the shoreline and inundated our community. It’s strange and surreal. And frightening. We’ll still be cleaning up on Election Day. And Alaskans, it is vital we vote with our climate in mind. We need to make America great again — starting by voting in a president who acknowledges that our climate matters.

Sep 7, 2024 | adn.com | Seth Kantner

KOTZEBUE — It’s raining again, the wind rising and waves sloshing over the grass. I’m yanking at corkline, struggling to stack my salmon nets into old army totes, to protect them from mice and weather for another winter. Commercial fishing in Kotzebue Sound is closed, over before it really started. A complete bust, exponentially worse than any in the past 51 years I’ve participated in this fishery. Catches were dismal in July and many of us assumed — or tried to believe — that the run was late.

Jul 28, 2024 | adn.com | Seth Kantner

KOTZEBUE — The west wind off the ice has kept the bugs down, and on the sunny summer nights I’ve been working on a kayak for my daughter, China. Actually, I’m copying one my dad built back in the 1970s, a light hunting craft that I used all my life. These days I have cordless power tools — drills, screw guns and a jigsaw — items that would have been magic in my youth, when I was woodworking with hand saws, chisels and a brace-and-bit.

May 3, 2024 | adn.com | Seth Kantner

Listening to the news lately, things sound terribly out of sorts, and I can’t help feeling a little lost, questioning what passes for new values. And what have people done with their old values? Last month when I traveled south on snowmobile in stormy conditions, those thoughts kept plaguing me, crossing the sea ice and trying not to get truly lost. I went down past a place that old-timers here call Arctic Circle, where the U.S. Army built a temporary beach runway during World War II.